Remove Misconceptions

Ordinary Organizations need Hierarchy

The crucial discovery, but one that is made repeatedly with much discomfort, is that stratification of organizations is required to enable management. This stratification reflects differences in the responsibility carried to do work, specially management work.

In regard to these organizations, extensive and in-depth inquiries have clarified not only how work (i.e. work-responsibility) differs from level to level, but also how management differs. These details are rarely properly understood, leading to serious errors:

• too few levels, or
• too many levels, or
• inappropriate levels.

Quite apart from the value of their output (which is highly variable), ordinary organizations, small and large, are important because they provide employment.

• As the primary work environment for most, their functioning impacts widely on psychological and physical health.
• As the basis for commerce &/or as needing to be economically viable, their functioning impacts on prosperity and social well-being.

Work is about effectively handling an endeavour, even one too small for a formal organization. Because work-levels exist as needs to be met and responses to be made, this section is not only about management structure and organizational design. It has relevance for everyone who wants to understand their own work and the options open to them in using their abilities.

Once ordinary organizations are understood—QH2 in THEE—the more unusual forms of QH-organization can be better addressed. In the essence of work introduction that follows, I provide a range of conjectures laid out as matrices so distinctions amongst work arenas are easy to see.

Management Work is Poorly Understood

Organising and managing are general terms for handling any social situation. Here we are restricting their use to work.

Work, in the sense of an occupation or specialized discipline, happens as a solo effort, in small partnership bands, distributed in crowds, and within organizations.

Organizations impersonally seek to employ staff who take work seriously. They should be equally seriously designed to support staff at work. The work to provide this supportive context is meta-work called management.

Management is meta-work—i.e. doing work on work to be done. This is essential to direct and to efficiently control occupational or disciplinary work. It typically deals with people doing the work, organisation of people at work, programs of work for people, and techniques relevant to work.
Details:

• People e.g. appointing, inducting, appraising, coaching, assigning tasks, discipline, disputes, promotion/deselection.
• Organisation e.g. assigning authority, assigning general duties, structuring positions, pay and perquisites systems, budgetary procedures.
• Programs e.g. priorities, resource mobilization and allocation, strategies, schedules, specific goals.
• Techniques e.g. specifications, policies, standards, quality levels, legal/ethical practices, training, research.

Management of work in an organization is, above all, the management of people-at-work.
If you think management is about management of resources, you are skipping a step—the resource that manages resources is people, at a minimum yourself. Mismanage them and management of other resources goes out the window.

Management work may not be obvious and is often disparaged. At the lowest levels it imperceptibly merges with doing the work—and it is then seen as a distraction. Many solo outfits and small businesses barely pay their way, or collapse, because the owner, a superb builder or cake-maker or scientist, is unaware of, or unwilling, or incapable of handling too many aspects of the necessary management work.

Organisation of management work is essential when you have a social body employing hundreds or thousands of staff and including a variety of distinctive occupational groups. The organisation of management then becomes a substantial and complicated task. It is most unlikely to be handled correctly without an adequate conceptual framework, such as that discovered and developed here.

Other Relevant THEE Frameworks

There is much more to organisation & management than found in this part of THEE which derives from communication and the use of language-PH'5.

Organisation, like community, is a basic expression of our social nature. Organizations are artificial associations deliberately created to get work done and achieve something that people need. Relevant aspects of organizations are found in a variety of places in the taxonomy, but especially in Purpose-PH6 and Action-PH1.

Purpose-PH6: Organizations are purposive entities, so Frameworks for Realizing Values (Ch.10 & Ch.12 of Working with Values) and Being Intentional (Ch.13) are relevant. The origin of organizations in the needs of communities leads to a classification based on their communal function (Ch.11). All these Chapters can be downloaded free.

Action-PH1: All achievement is a consequence of doing work i.e. decisions that are taken and actions that result. Expectations in this regard become complex when many staff are involved. Many staff are both self-interested employees and part of «the management» representing the organization. See Frameworks for: achievement-PH'1CK, expectations in employment-PH'1CsH, tensions in employment-PH'1CsHK.

Many THEE Frameworks that enable or shape our endeavours impact on life in organizations. For example, the framework of decision-making (PH'1) is necessary to understand how work gets done. the framework of interacting for benefit (PH'6QH4) is necessary to understand career development, cooperation, strengthening a commercial ethos, and marketing. The Framework of change (PH3) is also relevant (e.g. in regard to leadership) but this material is not yet fully developed.

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More Orientation

• Background to this inquiry, and the relevance of Elliott Jaques.
• THEE Path: from the Will, the Root Cell, to the Q-hierarchies.

  OR

• Start with the essence of work.

Originally posted: 11-Oct-2013